Posted on 06/03/2016 7:01:39 AM PDT by Buttons12
COAL RUN — A section of a proposed natural gas pipeline is scheduled to go through an area of Coal Township known for having abandoned mine workings and a underground mine fire...
(Excerpt) Read more at newsitem.com ...
Because fire is just so predictable, right folks?
The author, Deklinski, is a professional photographer, the go-to guy for historical photos of the region. No offense to him but a more informative article is here:
http://www.dailyyonder.com/gas-pipeline-proposed-mine-fire-area/2014/11/19/7616/
From dailyyonder: "Residents who live along the route of a proposed gas pipeline in central Pennsylvania worry that the natural gas 'boom' could become more than a figure of speech. The pipeline's route would go through an area plagued by underground coal mine fires and subsidence.
"The Glen Burn Colliery operated there for more than 130 years. It was once the second largest anthracite coal mine in the world. The waste produced by the mine – rock and coal dust – now sits as the world’s largest man-made mountain. There are three active fires inside the old tunnels.
"The most famous place like this is Centralia, Pennsylvania — the 'town-on-fire,' where the coal under town has been burning since 1962. But there are more than 30 other mine fires in Pennsylvania that most people don’t know about – like the fires where the Glen Burn Colliery used to be.
The natural gas pipeline is set to run right through the area of the Glen Burn fires."
The whole notion of these long-burning mine fires is really quite bizzare, and no, you don’t run a pipeline thru one!
Somebody did not plan well, or details are not clear. Did the pipeline planners believe they had identified an unaffected path between blazes? Why? Everybody ought to be asking.
To put the pipe down, a trench would presumably need to be dug. But unless they knew absolutely positively that no coal (so nothing that could burn or settle once burned) underlay the trench, it sounds like a crazy risk. Why can’t they skirt the fire area with the pipeline, go completely around it.
Wonder if they can make lemonade out of these lemons. It would be quite a “geothermal” energy source.
Define near. Like 10 feet or half a mile? There’s a lot of different types of near.
Heavens, no. That might help make the country energy independent.
The mine fires are down over two hundred feet below the surface.
If they were shallower the State would “dig them out” to put out the fires.
The coal in Eastern PA is under layers of rock, not close to the surface. All the shallow coal was mined 100 years ago.
The 42” pipeline will have about 48” of cover when backfilled, so 12” bedding plus 42” of pipe plus 48” of cover equals 102” to the lowest point, 102” divided by 12 equals 8’6” deep the fires are down 200’
That's the crux of it all: "we just don't really know."
The newsitem.com article is so loaded with qualifiers, estimates, possibles, maybes, comparables, and ifs, it reminds me of a chapter in Atlas Shrugged. The one about the tunnel caving in.
But speaking of comparables, "Last year, five miles away from the proposed pipeline route, a leaking Sunoco gas pipeline destroyed 350 acres of land and groundwater."
So aside from proximity to mine fires and the likelihood of subsidence in an area that does subsidence like Hollywood does movies...there's the chance of leaks. The area already looks like Chernobyl without the glow. Centralia looks like an overgrown graveyard abandoned by Vikings.
But as they say, it's about the money. Somebody stands to get some.
I can't imagine Pine Grove will let this thing happen. Coal Twp, though, could be the next Centralia.
I'm all for pipelines but this is asking for an epic disaster.
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